Spare the rod, spoil the child; child-rearing theories in 19th century Britain and America

'"Crinoline? - I was suspecting it! So young and so depraved!"'
W.M. Thackeray to Henry James' sister, aged eight.
(Henry James, A small boy and others, 1913, p. 94)
(Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Crinoline? By the American artist  Jessie Wilcox Smith
(Pinterest)

Nursery delights were one result of parents taking a closer personal interest in their children; toy shops and bookshops not only encouraged children to press their noses against the windows, but tempted adults to buy and to play too.  However, there were disadvantages.

It became the fashion to show off the children to admiring guests and it was a small step from using them in a charming naturalistic family group portrait to expecting them to display their talents.   Both children and guests suffered through  recitations of the latest 'piece' of music or verse.

Eleanor Farjeon  remembers:
'So I wetted my lips and began in a monotonous little voice:
"A  Pound of Tea at One-and-three,
A Pot of Strawberry Ham,
A..." Oh, horror, I had said it wrong.  The jumble didn't begin till the Third verse...I began again, hastily:
"A Pound of Tea at One-and-three,
A Pot of Strawberry Jam..."...I hesitate.
Every line, every word of the poem went out of my head.  I stared blankly in front of me...
"A Pound of Tea..."  I faltered, and stuck.
Somebody said, "She's forgotten it, poor little thing." I burst into tears, slithered along the floor-polish...and sobbed in Mama's lap...some of the elders patted me and said, "Never mind, dear," and another child got up and recited something competently.'
(Eleanor Farjeon, (1881-1965) children's author, A Nursery in the Nineties, 1935, p. 345)

Many children, especially girls, were made miserable by their failure to measure up to the conventional Victorian image seen in the Nister picture books; slightly plump, hair curly, preferably golden; blue eyes, definitely pretty.

Edith Sitwell, known for her striking, unconventional looks, said her eighteen year old mother thought that in Edith 'she was being endowed with a new doll - one that would open and shut its eyes at her bidding and say "Papa" "Mama". '
(Edith Sitwell, (1887-1964 English aristocrat, writer) Taken care of, 1965, p.26)

The Sitwell family painted by fashionable society artist 
John Singer Sargent.  Edith is in red.
(Pinterest)

The fashion for curly hair meant hours doing it up in rags and curl papers, and sleeping with a head covered in uncomfortable lumps, curling irons, and curls that either frizzed hopelessly or drooped at the first touch of rain.  Later Victorian dress for little girls was heavy and cumbersome, after a period of relative freedom under the Georgians when loose, unrestricted clothes had been considered healthy.

Alison Uttley, a farmer's daughter, has described her clothes as relatively simple, but by today's standards they were anything but:
'My clothes were plain and few, from the white chemise, which I wore next to my skin, to the top layer of frock and pinafore, (no jeans then!) and everything was home-made except the Liberty bodice on which my stockings fastened.  Buttoned to the bodice were white drawers with Torchon lace around the legs.  I was proud of my drawers, garments which must never be seen or the disgrace is terrible.'
At six she went on a visit to relatives in town, and returned with a child size bustle, which her mother threw on the fire.
(Alison Uttley, (1884-1976, children's author)Ambush of young days, 1937, p.74)

Henry James, the American writer, gives an amusing description of a little New Yorker's clothes in the 1850s:
'The main resource of a small New York boy in this line at that time was the little sheath-like jacket, tight to the body, closed at the neck and adorned in front with a single row of brass buttons - a garment of scant grace.'

At this time that is what little page-boys, in service in London hotels were also wearing, and the novelist W.M. Thackeray thought this very funny:
'"Come here little boy," he said, "and show me your extraordinary jacket!"'
He was equally amused by Henry James' sister wearing a crinoline:
'"Crinoline? - I was suspecting it! So young and so depraved!"'
(Henry James, (1843-1916 American novelist) A small boy and others, p.93, 94)

(Girls wearing crinolines; hoops under the skirt to hold it out.
From Victorian Fashion for Kids.com)

By the 1880s British boys, profiting from the fashion for outdoor life set by Victoria and Albert, had graduated to sailor suits and jerseys, though they  suffered impractical short trousers until about the 1950s.  By contrast their sisters were smothered in clothes.  Here is a description of a little girl's underclothes:

'We, too, put on first of all a vest.  Then a chemise, a garment whose use was never apparent to us, but we were given to understand that it wouldn't be at all 'nice' to go without it.  It was made of white and reached to the knees.  Next 'stays' a strip of wadded pique whose use was unmistakable.  In addition to the five buttons that fastened our stays up the back, they had a number of other buttons at various levels and intervals round the waist.  Two of these held up the elastic 'spenders' of our stockings; the five buttonholes of our drawers belonged to the other three, and yet more were buttoned into two holes in the band of our flannel petticoat.  Over that came a white petticoat made with a bodice.  Sometimes the buttons went pop and one's drawers slid slowly down one's legs.'
(from Phyllis Cunnington and Anne Buck, Children's costume in England, 1965, p. 182- quoted
from Elizabeth Acland, Goodbye for the present, the story of two childhoods; Milly, 1878 -88, 1935 p. 25)

A well-dressed child.
(Heartfelt.Pinterest)

This description is from the early 19th century, but the fashion for stays continued; Gwen Raverat and her sister were put into stays in the 1890s.  They rebelled:
'We knew it was almost hopeless - we were outnumbered and outflanked on every side - but we did rebel against stays.  Margaret says that the first time she was put into them - when she was about thirteen - she ran round and round the nursery screaming with rage. I did not do that.  I simply went away and took them off.  I endured sullenly the row which ensued, when my soft-shelled condition was discovered; was forcibly re-corseted; and, as soon as possible went away and took them off again.  One of my governesses used to weep over my wickedness in this respect.  I had a bad figure, and to me they were real instruments of torture; they prevented me from breathing, and dug deep holes into my softer parts on every side.'
(Gwen Raverat ( 1885-1957, artist,) Period piece, 1952, p. 259)

Gwen Raverat, Olga at the window,
(Pinterest)

Quite apart from these efforts to turn out children, especially girls, presentably, numerous theories on upbringing abounded.  It was as though parents had become fascinated by the problems of bringing up children.  Gwen Raverat, whose mother was a volatile expatriate American, lists some of the rules and prohibitions she and her friends were subject to:
'I don't believe that my mother was more subject to attacks of theories than many other parents of her time; indeed many children of my acquaintance had parents who were more addicted to them than she was...There were some children who might not ride bicycles, and others who were forbidden to go in boats; some who were forced to play the violin, and others who always had to wear mufflers; some who might not eat current buns, and others who were obliged to have cold baths; all kinds of fads and foolishness.  There were even some children who were forced to go barefoot, and others who were forbidden to do so.'
(Gwen Raverat, op. cit, p. 47-8)

Victorian children, artist Emile Vernon Foster
(Colinbradleyart.com)

Generally a plain diet was favoured, as it had been for centuries, but theories on what was plain and wholesome and what must be avoided at all consts changed with bewildering illogicality in the absence of anything more that rudimentary understanding of the effects of diet on health.

One remarkable difference that emerges from British and American autobiographies from this period is that British writers, if they mention food at all, describe childhood meals as varying from extremely plain to quite horrible.  Although some American children, like Louisa M. Alcott, were brought up on the plain diet advised by Locke and Rousseau, it seems to have been far less general than in Britain.
(Louisa M. Alcott, (1832-1888, American writer) Her Life, Letters and Journals, edited by Ednah D. Cheney,1898, p. 19  Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

American children, advert for Niagara gloss starch,
(University of Miami, Pinterest)

American writers frequently take delight in describing memories of sumptuous meals.  Mark Twain revels in a long description of Southern corn bread, hot biscuits, wheat bread and fried chicken
(Autobiography of Mark Twain, 2 vols, 1924, Vol. 1, p. 96.  A new Mark Twain Project edition in 3 vols was published 2010-15; The American writer Mark Twain, 1835-1910, worked on his autobiography from 1870)

Henry James revelled in 'mounds of Isabella grapes and Seckel pears in the sticky sweetness of which our childhood seems to have been steeped...bushels of peaches in particular, peaches big and peaches small, peaches white and peaches yellow.'
(Henry James, A small boy and others, op. cit, p. 75)

The British aristocrat and writer Osbert Sitwell, on the other hand, describes the menu in the Renishaw nursery with typical Sitwell wit:
'all the things for which children now clamour - and are often indeed obliged against their will to eat - oranges and sweets and fruit juices, were beyond the pale.  Boiled mutton...and a stodgy eternity of rice pudding, stretching spotless beyond the horizon or, like the Church of England Heaven, a pale eternity of jelly, constituted pour recognised diet, based on scientific knowledge.'
(Osbert Sitwell, (1892-1969) Left Hand, Right Hand, 1945, Vol. 1, p. 163)

The 'eat everything on your plate' rule was still strictly applied.  Compton Mackenzie and his brother hid their fat in the piano until the smell betrayed them.(Compton Mackenzie,(1883-1972,English writer)  My Life and Times, Vol. 1, 1963, p. 36)

Centuries of opposition to beating children produced alternative methods of asserting control over them. From the mid 17th century, for instance, children were shut in a dark room or closet.  Samuel Pepys records in his diary that he
'fell mightily out, and made my wife, to the disturbance of the house and neighbours, to beat our little girle (the servant); and then we shut her down in the cellar and there she lay all night.  So we to bed.'
(Samuel Pepys. (1633-1703, English diarist)  Diary edited by Robert Latham and W. Matthews, 1972, Vol. 6,  19 Feb. 1665)

Elizabeth Grant recalls in her memoirs that she and her brothers and sisters were often banished to a closet if they were naughty, and sometimes forgotten for hours. (Elizabeth Grant,  (1797-1830, known for her family memoir) Memoirs of a Highland Lady, 1898, p. 59)

Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Vicky, the Princess Royal, went through a phase of telling lies, and was put into solitary confinement with her hands tied for saying she had been given permission to wear her pink bonnet for an outing when she had not.
(Daphne Bennett Queen Victoria's Children, 1980, p. 25)

Girl with sweets,
(Victorianctading.com.Pinterest)

Shutting children in closets when they were naughty seems to have been the custom in other royal households; a French nurse arriving with the refugees from the 1848 Revolution admired Osborne House for the number of closets it provided:
'N'est-ce pas, madame, que ce palais est remarquable par la quantité d'armoires qu'il contient, pour enfermer les enfants méchants?'( Madam, is this palace not remarkable for the number of closets it contains for shutting up the  naughty children?)
(Letters from Sarah, Lady Lyttleton 1797-1870, 1912, p. 374)

Punishments which made a child look ridiculous or wounded their self esteem were quite common, particularly in the schoolroom.  Lord Curzon and his sisters were made by their sadistic governess to make and wear red calico petticoats and dunce's caps with placards naming their faults:
'Liar, Sneak, Coward, Lubber and the like.'  He attributed his extremely strong character partly to this difficult time.  As he managed to control the tribes of Afghanistan, the North West Frontier, he must have been a remarkable man.
(Leonard Mosley, Curzon, The end of an epoch, 1960, p. 9, quoted from Curzon's own notes on his childhood.  Lord Curzon, 1829-1925,  writer, Victorian statesman, Viceroy of India,

Various ingenious attempts were made to make the punishment fit the crime, for example, the popular punishment of washing the mouth out with soapy water for swearing, or, in Gwen Raverat's case, for biting:
'And so once, when I had bitten the nursery-maid, I had my mouth washed out with soap and water; and anothger time when I had slapped her, I had socks tied down over my hands and had to come down to lunch and be fed in public with a spoon...And when I cut off my own hair, I was made to go about with it as it was for several days before I was allowed to have it cut properly.'
(Gwen Raverat, Period Piece, 1952, p. 58)

Most children probably accepted adult attempts to discipline them as natural and conformed, rebelled or evaded them according to their nature.  Some, however, rebelled against the very principles behind the system and bitterly resented it as adults.  Their case is put by the well-known children's writer Harriet Martineau in her autobiography:
'Not a word was ever preached about the justice due from the stronger to the weaker...I used to thirst to hear some notice of the oppresson which servants and children had (as I supposed universally) to endure, in regard to their feelings.'
(Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, 1877, Vol. 1,  p. 21 Hathi Trust internet edition available.) (Harriet Martineau, 1802-1876, a British writer and early feminist)

There is evidence that British children were far more strictly brought up at this time than little Americans.  Harriet Martineau travelled in America, and said that constant correction made her a timid child.  She found the independence and fearlessness of American children delightful, and attributed it to their relative importance in a sparsely populated country.  She believed their spirit of individualism was fostered by republicanism:
'Till the United States cease to be republican, and their vast area is fully populated, the children there will continue as free and easy and as important as they are.  For my part I delight in American children.'
(Harriet Martineau, Society in America, 1837,Vol. 3, p. 166. Gutenberg internet edition available.  Quoted in Robert Bremner, Children and youth in America, a documentary history, 1970, Vol. 1, p. 350)

The writer and social activist Harriet Martineau
(Wikipedia)

Europeans often remarked on the independence and what some called the insubordination of American children.  Frederick Marryat tells an amusing story of an American family he met while travelling in the States in the 1830s.  The son was being flagrantly disobedient, but instead of punishing him, his father turned to Marryat remarking:
"A sturdy republican, Sir,"' and smiling at his disobedience.'
(Frederick Marryat, A Diary in America, 1839, Vol. 3, p. 284)  Quoted in Robert Bremner op. cit,
 Vol. 1, p. 344)

The British writer Frances Trollope also travelled in the USA and commented disapprovingly on their 'total want of discipline and subjugation which I observed universally among children of all ages'
(Frances Trollope, Domestic manners of the Americans, 1832, Vol. 2 p. 298, Gutenberg internet edition available)

Like theories on diet, theories on medical treatment have absorbed those who had care of children for as long as parents have been struggling to bring them up.  However, while diet theory generally stated that children should be given plain food, medical theories have varied wildly.  Generally, children suffered the same 'cures' as adults.  By the 19th century improvements in medical knowledge had discredited 'bleeding in the Jugular' as treatment for a feverish cold (Autobiography of the Hon. Roger North (1653-1734) ed. A. Jessopp, 1887, p. 253)

 However, regular use of bleeding as a cure-all had given way to an obsession with regular bowel movements.  From 17th century physicians' tentative theories that there might be some connection between constipation and disorders such as piles, a very strong belief in the value of purging developed.  Children were obvious victims:
'I  have carryed his nurse the Rhubarb, and she promiseth he shall constantly drink it.'

(Frances Parthenope Verney, Memoirs of the Verney family during the Civil War (1642-1651), Vol. 2, 1892 ed. p. 6)

Many children were much more unpleasantly dosed:
'Mrs. Squeers stood at one of the desks, presiding over an immense basin of brimstone and treacle, of which delicious compound she administered a large instalment to each boy in succession.'
(Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby,first published 18-8-9, quote from 1906 ed. Vol. 1, p. 105)

An American nursery maid and small child
(Stripedstockings.Pinterest)

According to Mark Twain, in Monroe County, Missouri, USA, when faced with an obscure illness it was the custom to work up through a series of treatments of increasing severity, beginning with purging with castor oil and New Orleans molasses, and finishing with mustard plasters, presumably to raise the patient's temperature, and, if that failed, bleeding, to lower the temperature:
'The next standby was colonel; the next rhubarb; and the next julap.  Then they bled the patient, and put mustard plasters on him.'
(Autobiography of Mark Twain, op. cit, p. 106)

Samuel Butler's miserable anti-hero Ernest Pontifex was dosed with camomile and Dr. James' powder.  This medicine had been popular since the mid 18th century and was patented by John Newbery, publisher of many delightful early children's story books.  Newbery advertised the powder as a cure-all in the story books he wrote and published;
Goody Two-Shoes' father died because he unfortunately 'contracted a fever in a place where Dr. James's powder was not to be had...'
(Samuel Butler,  (1835-1902, British novelist,) Ernest Pontifex or, The Way of All Flesh, 1903, quote from 1965 ed. edited by D.F. Howard, p. 82. and The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, 3rd, ed. 1766, facsimile edition with an introduction by Charles Welsh, 1881, p. 13)

Compton Mackenzie remembered being given most of the laxatives popular in the late 19th century:
'Dr. Gregory's filthy powder...senna tea or castor oil...given to a wretched child in warm milk...Ipecacuanha was another disgusting tea-spoonful; liquorice powder an equally disgusting glassful.  I suppose the idea of making every aperient a foul business was to instil in the child's mind the notion that constipation was something sinful for which a penalty had to be paid.'
(Compton Mackenzie, (1883-1972, British writer)My Life and Times, 1963, Octave 1, p. 111)

The Royal children were regularly given castor oil, on the advice of their doctor:
'The Princess Royal, although quite well in every other respect, has not gained appetite despite the dose' observed Lady Lyttleton who was the capable and motherly overseer of the royal nursery in the notebook on their progress which she kept for the Queen and Prince Albert
(Daphne Bennett, Queen Victoria's children, 1980, p. 23)

The Royal children, largely due to Prince Albert, enjoyed what, for the Victorians, was a model upbringing.  The Queen thought small babies rather disgusting and refused to breast feed, although this was now fashionable with doctors.  Their first child, Princes Vicky, was put in the care of Mrs. Southey, but disagreements between her and the head nurse led to nursery chaos.  The anxious young father replaced Mrs. Southey with Lady Lyttelton, who remained in overall charge of the steadily growing brood for about ten years. (Bennett, op. cit. p.22)

Her letters show her strict, but tolerant and motherly with a sense of humour;
'Oh dear, I wish there were no portrait being done of the Princess Royal; and that all her relations...did not always come to see her at once, and make her naughty, and her governess cross.  Poor little body! She is never to be naughty; always expected to be good and civil and sensible; and the Duke of Cambridge...tells the Queen...that it is very odd the Princes should ever cry! "So very odd; my daughters never did cry!..."And Her Majesty believes her uncle....'

'Princess just now established herself close to a large mirror down to the ground, and broke out in admiration of her own little fat figure and round white face - "Princessy! darling! oh you darling! Well then I never did!...."  It was much too droll! '
(Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, Lady Lyttelton, 1787-1870, edited by...Mrs. Hugh Wyndham. 1912.  p. 332, letter dated 1842.  See also the Lyttelton Letters, op. cit, 1873 edition, p. 306, 317)

Frederick Winterhalter, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children
(Pinterest)

Prince Albert studied all the latest theories on child care and instituted a regime of good plain food, plenty of fresh air, cold baths, and only small fires to harden the children's constitutions and to lessen the risk of TB germs which were thought to be encouraged by over-heated rooms. Lady Lyttelton was sometimes glad to escape to the fire in her own room, and the children were prone to chilblains and rheumatism but, unusually for the 19th century, all lived to adulthood and some, like Princess Alice, to exceptional old age.

This may have been partly due to Prince Albert's concern with hygiene and to the modern sewage systems installed at Osborne and Balmoral where they spent much of their time.
(see Bennett, D. op. cit, p. 30-)

Prince Edward, later King Edward VII, and his brothers and sisters were treated as nearly as possible like other small children and expected to show the politeness and obedience due from children to adults.
'"But not to Caroline Cocks" said Princess Alice for apparent reason, after one long lecture from Lady Lyttelton.
(Lyttelton Letters, op. cit, p. 394)

 They and their brothers and sisters were guarded from the obsequious pandering to their whims and jockeying for favour which had  encouraged the Prince Regent and George III's other children to become such famously self-indulgent adults.  However, unlike Victoria, who had few companions apart from her many dolls and her governess, they had plenty to amuse them.  Not only did they have each other to play with, but Queen Victoria and Prince Albert took a close interest in their children's upbringing and education, which gave their household a family atmosphere admired by the members of other European royal families.  The Queen, when her duties allowed, heard the children read and personally gave them their early religious instruction.  (Bennett, op. cit, p. 28)

 Prince Albert played with them a lot and taught his children through informal lessons:
'All the children are out with the Queen and Prince attended by the bailiff, to the sheep shorn' (ie to see sheep shearing)

Prince Albert encouraged them to ask intelligent questions, like the children in Scientific dialogues or Conversations on Botany:
'"Pray, Mama, is not a pink the female of a carnation?"' asked Edward, Prince of Wales once.
(Lyttelton Letters, op. cit.  1873 ed. p. 407, 408)

They led healthy outdoor lives, not too strictly supervised:
'Just seen the eldest six zits (sic), all scattered over one of the new terraces, without hats or bonnets, running wild after dinner.  They looked very pretty writes Lady Lyttelton from Osborne, the new palace built by Prince Albert on the Isle of Wight.  Zits was her word for the children. There was plenty of sailing and sea bathing since salt water was thought to be extremely good for the health. Lady Lyttelton records Prince Edward's first dip in the sea at Osborne in 1846:
'A great nursery event.  Princey is gone to be bathed in the sea for the first time...The Prince very pleasantly has undertaken to do it all himself, there being no machines or bathers here.  So the zite is gone with "Only Papa..."

There were pony rides and other pets such as the uncooperative lamb described by Lady Lyttelton:
'Princess Alice's pet lamb is the cause of many tears.  He will not take to his mistress, but runs away hastily, and will soon butt at her, though she is most coaxy; and said to him in her sweetest tones, after kissing his nose often:
"Milly! dear Milly!  Do you like me?"
(Lyttelton Letters, 1873 ed. p. 369, 405)

The Royal household set an influential example to the whole country and encouraged the tendency towards active family life characteristic of Queen Victoria's reign.  Better hygiene and medicine meant more surviving children and larger families.  At best children's lives were enriched by the society of their numerous relations.  Family gatherings on specific occasions, like those celebrated by Dickens, became customary at Christmas, births, birthdays, deaths and weddings and at that very Victorian institution, the family holiday in the country or at the seaside.  It is not surprising that the keynote of most autobiographical accounts of Victorian childhood is one of happiness, although adults often complained of declining standards and the insubordination of the younger generation, just as adults do today:

Artist Charles West Cope; A Life Well Spent
(Pinterest)

'Gratitude to parents, respect for age and authority are not what they should be these days.'
(Queen Victoria to Vicky, Princess Royal, 28 May 1872.  Darling Child, Private correspondence of Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia; ie her daughter Princess Vicky, 1976.)
Certainly Prince Edward, later King Edward VII must have been a great disappointment to his parents; careful parenting sometimes seems to have no better success than no parenting at all.

Nurses and Governesses; surrogate parenting

'Parents were aware that the child could be a nuisance, and a whole hedge of servants, in addition to the complex guardianship of nursery and schoolroom, was necessary, not so much to aid the infant as to screen him off from his father and mother, except on such occasions as he could be used by then as adjunct, toy or decoration.'
(Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand! An autobiography, 1943, Vol. 1, p.92)

John Sargent, The Sitwell Family, 1900 (Wikipedia)
Edith, Sir George, Lady Ida, Sacheverell, Osbert

Though family life began to be, as it were, fashionable, in the 19th century, many parents did not, in fact, spend a lot of time actually with their children.
In the 19th century large households gradually developed a complete suite of rooms set aside for the children and their servants, usually at the top of the house.  Kenneth Clarke, born 1903, describes his as: 'behind a green baize door on the edge of the servants' wing.' (Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 1974)

There would normally be a night nursery, a day nursery, possibly a schoolroom, and often all this plus bathrooms, scullery, governess's room and sick room, also used as a bedroom for visiting children.  This was the arrangement at Bear Wood, built 1865-74.  The owner, John Wood, proprietor of The Times  newspaper, eventually had thirteen children to fill this complex.
(Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House, 1979, p.263-272)

Although parents were officially the ultimate authority, the nurses or governesses who took care of children most of the time would obviously be important figures in their lives.
As Eleanor Farjeon put it:
'The departure of the First Governess, like the departure of the First Nurse, creates a Nursery cataclysm.  They are The Nurse, The Governess, as our parent are The Parents.'
(Eleanor Farjeon, A Nursery in the Nineties, 1935, p.408)

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
Image: Alchetron)

It was usual for children to be gradually integrated into adult life in families such as these.  When they were little they often saw their mother for a short while in the morning, informally in the nursery, and would be brought down to the dining room for both parents and any guests to see them after dinner.  Elizabeth Grant, born 1797, has described the routine in her family in the early 19th century:
'When father was at home, all appeared at late dinner, or rather at the second course, in full dress, like the footmen.  We sat in a row - we four, little Mary and all, on four chairs placed against the wall - trained to perfect quiet...to hear and not to speak; but on the dessert appearing we were released, walked forward to receive a little wine, a little fruit, and a biscuit, and then to have our game at romps....'
(Elizabeth Grant, 1797-1888, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the autobiography f Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, after Mrs. Smith of Baltiboys, 1911, p. 61.  Internet copy available, University of Toronto)

Lady Grant with her two children,
(University of Toronto, internet edition)

As the children grew older, they might join their mother at lunch unless, like most boys, they were away at boarding school.  Boys were usually sent away at about age seven. Girls were usually educated at home, and would gradually introduced to their mother's friends and private social circle before they officially 'came out' into society aged about seventeen.

As small children they spent their time with their nanny or nursery maids.  Improvements in prams and push-chairs made nannies and their little charges more mobile in the late 19th century, and a complex nanny-oriented social life developed in fashionable cities such as London, Brighton, Bath, Boston and New York.

Compton Mackenzie, who had an extraordinarily vivid and long memory, recalls what it felt like to ride in one of those early prams:
'I wonder if many people recall the sensation of riding in a 'pram' - that bump down from the pavement into the roadway and that bump up when the opposite pavement was reached.  One shot forward against the safety-strap as one bumped down, and backwards as one bumped up.  And then those ominous words "its coming on to rain", after which the hated hood was raised and the brass catches - or whatever they were called - were straightened with a click.  The world on either side of one was excluded...'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, Octave I, 1963, p. 91)

Nannies would congregate in the public parks with their charges; children's tea-parties were arranged.  There were strict hierarchies of importance, depending, in Britain, on the rank of one's charges or, in east coast America, on wealth or that great mark of social distinction, descent from the original Mayflower immigrants.

Hulton Archive

In that great nanny haven, Kensington Gardens, for instance, 'Untitled' nannies might not occupy certain benches.  This complex snob system was evolved more or less spontaneously by the nannies themselves.  Just as having a nanny for the children became a middle class mark of social arrival, so being in charge of the infant section of some distinguished house conferred social distinction on the nanny, who in her anxiety for her own status would often pass on an exaggerated idea of their personal importance to her charges
(see Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and  Fall of the British Nanny, 1972, p. 197-204)

Several autobiographies mention those, to the children, rather boring nanny-organised occasions.
The most evocative account is the writer Virgina Woolf, of walks twice a day in Kensington Gardens:
'There was the Broad Walk, the Round Pond and the Flower Walk.  Then...there were two gates, one offosite Gloucester Road, the other opposite Queen's Gate.  At each gate sat an old woman.  The Queen's Gate old woman was an elongated, emaciated figure with a goat-like face, yellow and pock-marked.  She sold nuts and bootlaces, I think. And Kitty Mase said of her: "Poor things, it's the drink that makes them like that"...The other old woman was round and squat.  To her was attached a whole wobbling balloon of air-balls.  She held this billowing, always moving most desirable mass by one string...for a penny she would detach one from the bellying soft mass, and I would dance away with it...'(Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, 1976, p.35)

'This is the old woman shown in Arthur Rackham's illustrations to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, almost blown away by her enormous bobbing bunch of coloured balloons.  Periodically the walks were strewn with minute sea shells, and until the park keepers came with their roller and ground them down to powder, the children would rush up and down making collections, while their nanny sat conversing with other nurses on a circular bench under one of the big trees, generally on the subject of the misdoings of their respective charges.'
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936 p. 16)

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens,
 illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1906
(Pinterest)

One of the few other diversions was sailing boats on the Round Pond, where one day Virginia Stephens' Cornish lugger sailed right to the middle and suddenly sank.
(Virginia Woolf, b. Virginia Stephens, op.cit. p.75)

At about five years old the children generally began to take lessons from a governess, and there was frequently  considerable rivalry between her and the nanny, generally won by the governess as the children inevitably grew into her sphere and out of that of the nanny.

This system meant that many children were practically brought up by nurses and governesses or tutors.  For only children it could be a lonely life.  Margaret Lane gives a sad picture of lonely little Beatrix Potter, later famous as the creator of Peter Rabbit, living in her well-regulated nursery with all her material needs provided for, playing with her doll Topsy, eating her daily cutlet and rice pudding, always the same, dressed up in muff and button boots to go for her daily walk, and almost forgotten.
(Margaret Lane The tale of Beatrix Potter, 1946 chapter 1)

Beatrix Potter aged 8 with her parents
(V&A)

However the nursery could also be a haven to which, like Leonard Woolf would look back to with nostalgia all their lives:
'I can still feel myself physically enfolded in the warmth and safety of the great nursery on the third floor of the house in Lexham Gardens, the fire blazing behind the tall guard, the kettle singing away, and nurse, with her straight black hair parted in the centre, and her smooth, oval peasant face, reading the Baptist Times or the visions of the opium eater (Confessions of an English Opium Eater, de Quincey)...and occasionally far off could be heard the clop-clop if a horse in a hansom cab or four-wheeler,...I never again found any safety and civilisation to equal that of the gas-lit nursery.'
(Leonard Woolf, Sowing, 1880-1904, Hogarth Press, 1960 p. 60-61, internet ed. available.  Somehow nurse had got hold of a copy of Confessions of an English Opium Eater and read it over and over again)

For many children in the American South their black Mammy epitomised the same security:
'None but a Southerner to the manner born can appreciate or imagine the tie that bound us of that old-time South to our dear black mammy, in whose capacious lap the little ones confided to her care cuddled in innocent slumber' says Mrs. Clay of Alabama in her memoirs
(A Belle of the Fifties...Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama...1853-66, 1905, p.211, e-book available)
As in many European families the children's black mammy frequently held a privileged position on the household long after her charges had outgrown the nursery.  How did those children reconcile their upbringing with slavery?  Is the role of Scarlett O'Hara's beloved black mammy in Gone with the Wind intended to point up this inconsistency? The Black American actress Hattie McDaniel, as  Mammy, won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the 1939 screen version of Margaret Mitchell's book about slavery and the American Civil War.  As I write, August 2017, a theatre in Memphis has just cancelled its regular summer showing of the film, as romanticising slavery.

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy,
Sleznick International Pictures, 1939)

Employing nurses to bring up children probably began with hiring wet-nurses to feed babies breast milk, which was pretty universal in any families that could afford one, and really only declined when bottled milk became available.

 By the 19th century, as the 1814 wage bill for Nunwell, a country house on the Isle of Wight, shows, the wet nurse had decreased in importance to a mere human milk machine.  This bill included a nurse, nurserymaid and under-nurserymaid, paid 18 guineas a year, 8 guineas and 8 guineas plus tea allowances.  The previous year there had also  been a wet nurse at 4/6 a week plus tea allowance.  Tea had now overtaken beer as the beverage of choice for nursemaids.
(Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell Symphony, 1945, p. 179-80)

The whole organisation of the nursery was now under the direction of the head nurse, later called the nanny.  This meant that the nanny no longer had to be a young woman, and quite frequently a beloved nanny remained with the family for life, or even returned to nurse the children of her original charges.
Ruskin's nurse Anne had previously nursed his father, though it was more usually the mother's nurse who was retained, almost taking on the role of many grandmothers today.
Ruskin numbers Anne with his parents as one of the people he most loved.
(John Ruskin, Praeterita, 1900, Vol. 1, p. 34, internet ed. available)
This is very common.  R.L. Stevenson dedicated A Child's Garden of Verses to his 'Dearest Cummy':

'The angel of my infant life -
From the sick child; now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold.'

This nurse, Alison Cunningham, was a strict Presbyterian Covenanter who told him tales of Scottish history.  Many years later he said to her:
'"It's you, that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie"
"Me, Master Lou,", I said; "I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.""Ay, woman", said he, "But it was the grand dramatic way ye had of reciting the hymns."'
(Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1901, Vol. 1 p. 37, internet ed. available)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) aged 7
(Wikipedia)

Such nurses could, of course, exercise a very powerful influence over their charges' future lives.
The seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, the great philanthropist, had an extremely unhappy childhood.
Shaftsbury scarcely saw his parents and attributed the formation of his strong religious faith and moral character entirely to Marie Millis the housekeeper who cared for him until he was seven.(Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, KG, 1886, Vol. 1, p. 51.  Internet ed. available)

Many children, however, divided their affection between nanny, whom they loved in an everyday way, and parents, particularly their mothers, whom they associated with treats, parties, glamour and excitement.  Winston Churchill give a classic comparison of the two relationships in My Early Life:
'My mother always seemed to me a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power...I loved her dearly, but at a distance.  My nurse was my confidant.  Mrs. Everest it was who looked after me and tended all my wants.  It was to her I poured out my many troubles, both now and in my schooldays.'
(Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930, p.18. internet ed. available.  Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, was a rather rackety American socialite.  Although she was a distant figure in Churchill's early life she became a close confidante and supporter when he was adult)

Winston Churchill aged 10, 1884
(BBC Archive)

As adults many people, like Leonard Woolf, described their mothers as adoring them, even when it is clear they only saw each other for a couple of hours each day.
 Possibly nannies acted as a kind of buffer state, taking on all the unpleasant, disciplinarian aspects of mother and leaving child and mother free to idealise each other.   (Leonard Woolf, op.cit, p.54)
Compton Mackenzie certainly seems to have rationalised his relationships this way.  His nanny does not seem to have been actually unkind, just strict, unimaginative, grumpy:

'Looking back on it now, I think that having to deal with unreasonableness in an elderly woman was a valuable preparation for life because it taught me very early to expect people to be stupid and to be agreably surprised when they were not.'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, 1963, p.38)

Annie Curry operated a system of rewards and withdrawal of privileges; perfectly normal, enlightened 19th century practise, which he bitterly resented:
'Apparently anything even mildly pleasant came under the category of treats.  It was a treat to walk on the grass in the Gardens; it was a treat to help to push Stella's perambulator; it was a treat to have the sponge floating beside him in the bath...'She tied their hands in bags at night to prevent nail biting, gave them nasty medicine, insisted they ate all their fat, and, probably unintentionally, terrified Compton Mackenzie with threats of being carried away by climbing coalmen:

'Michael caught his breath.
"Can coalmen climb?" he asked, choking at the thought.
"Climb like kittens," said Nurse.

A new bogey had been created, black and hairy with yellow cat's eyes and horrid prehensile arms.'
(Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street, autobiographical novel, p. 20-21 and p.33)

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy in his research discovered that few children had the misfortune to suffer genuinely cruel nannies.  Even those who did, he notes, rarely admitted to disliking them which is probably because they had become surrogate mothers, covered by the same taboos.  Cruelty and misery are more commonly associated with governesses who would often take charge of both boys and girls from about the age of five to seven when boys generally went as boarders to prep school.
J. Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny, 1972, chapter 9)

Nannies in the park
(Pinterest)

The redoubtable Viceroy of India, Lord George Curzon's account of his governess Miss Paraman is particularly interesting since her evident effect on his character, and his future career, are so well documented.  Lord Curzon describes her physical and mental cruelty to him and his sisters.  She appears to have been quite sadistic; Lord Curzon later concluded she was probably insane:
'She made us trundle our hoops all alone up and down a place near the hermitage where were tall black fir trees and a general air of gloom of which we were intensely afraid.  She forced us to confess to lies we had never told, to sins which we had not committed, and then punished us savagely as being self-condemned.  For weeks we were not allowed to speak to each other or a living soul.  At meals she tool all the dainties for herself and gave us nothing but tapioca and rice.  I suppose no children so well born or so well placed ever cried so much, or so justly.'
(Leonard. Mosley, The End of an Epoch, 1960. internet ed. available)

Moseley sums up the effect on Lord Curzon:
'Thereafter, it could almost be said that he spent his life looking for stronger, more ruthless and more egotistic characters upon which he could bruise himself...'' and quotes Lord Kitchener's remark:
'There is only one thing that Curzon likes more than hurting others...and that is to persuade others to humiliate him.'  (Moseley, op.cit. p10) Against that, according to Wikipedia Curzon had a firm, happy marriage.  I don't know whether Leonard Moseley has any link to Oswald Moseley, but Wikipedia says two of Curzon's daughters, and his second wife, had affairs with him.)

Lord Curzon as a Hindu God
(Maratha Punch, 1899, Baksheesh!)

Similar experiences, though documentary evidence is sadly lacking, might help to explain the late 19th and early 20th century upper class passion for flagellation and other sexual games of humiliation.  Although there is also probably a connection with bullying and beatings inflicted at school, Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians notes that in such sexual fantasies the beater is a woman not a man, and the accompanying humiliations are often those of the nursery.

It is also suggested by Gathorne-Hardy that nursery maids sometimes prematurely aroused the sexual instincts of their charges, intentionally or not, leading, in later life, to strong sexual attraction to girls of their class.  No doubt many little boys sharing a room and sometimes a bed with their nurse maids made discoveries which could form the basis of adult fantasies, in spite of the nanny habit of undressing under their enormous, tent-like calico night-dresses.
Compton Mackenzie,. for instance, says he made his first innocent sexual exploration when put to bed with Ellen, one of the maids.  He woke in the middle of the night and 'started to explore the sleeping Ellen in the course of which I was astonished to find myself, like Dante once upon a time in a Selva Oscura (dark jungle) which I searched in vain for my own little appendage, and being greatly puzzled by not finding it anywhere...' (Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, p.162. )

(The pram society.com)

Lord Curzon (1859-1925) said that by the end of his career such cruelty as Miss Paraman's would be impossible since by that time the governess system had largely disappeared while it had become normal for children to spend. a great deal more time with their parents.  However, unless parents keep a close watch over their children the system is always open to abuse.  The novelist F. Anstey
(Thomas Anstey Guthrie, 1956-34) for instance, had a nurse stricter than his father liked. She believed children should eat everything set before them, and used to serve up any crusts left from supper at breakfast next morning until their father found out.  Anstey says:
'Somehow none of these petty oppressions, of which these are only instances, lessened our affection for Fanny; it never occurred to us that she was going at all beyond her authority.'
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936 p.15)

Kenneth Clark  (1903-1983) felt his parents' servants got back at their employers by being unkind to him as a small boy.
'They gave me uneatable food although they themselves lived off the fat of the land.  I remember a cheese so full of weevils that small pieces jumped about the plate; I remember branches of bitter rhubarb, sour milk, rancid butter - and, of course, nothing but obstinate silence.  It was an unconscious programme of revenge.'
(Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 1974)
Children rarely have enough critical sense, lacking experience, to know that people are not doing their jobs properly.

Lack of parental control over the nursery and schoolroom could also work in the child's favour. Elizabeth Grant's father laid down extremely strict rules about diet, and a rigorous spartan regime, which was frequently relaxed by sympathetic nursery maids when he was not around.
(Elizabeth Grant, 1797-1888, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the autobiography f Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, after Mrs. Smith of Baltiboys, 1911, p. 56.  Internet copy available, University of Toronto)

The Sitwells' nurse supplemented the children's plain diet with little treats of winkles and shrimps which she bought herself. (Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand, 1943 Vol. 1, p. 92)

Mother lays down the law to Nurse
(Pinterest)

Although Lord Curzon is right saying that by Edwardian times children of wealthy parents  saw a lot more of them than when he was a boy, far more boys were sent away to boarding school.  Since they were often sent away to prep school at seven school life was just as important as family life.